| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: "You will never see them again--they are destroyed. They came from
Satan. I saw the hell-brand on them, and I knew they were sent to
betray me to sin." Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful
things which were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor
admonished them to keep to themselves.
Richards was right; the cheques were never seen again.
A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the
forbidden gabblings were the property of the town; and they were of
a surprising sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a
claimant for the sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that
fact and then maliciously betrayed it.
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: silliness and shallowness that I had always felt and felt now most
acutely under Britten's gibes, came in. They were neglecting human
life altogether in social organisation.
In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth of
statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of statecraft and
all organising spirits to attempt immediately to scheme and arrange
and achieve. Priests, schools of thought, political schemers,
leaders of men, have always slipped into the error of assuming that
they can think out the whole--or at any rate completely think out
definite parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and
finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct on that
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: to speak aloud, as if he were speaking to Rachel):
"I worship you, but I loathe marriage, I hate its smugness, its safety,
its compromise, and the thought of you interfering in my work,
hindering me; what would you answer?"
He stopped, leant against the trunk of a tree, and gazed without
seeing them at some stones scattered on the bank of the dry
river-bed. He saw Rachel's face distinctly, the grey eyes, the hair,
the mouth; the face that could look so many things--plain, vacant,
almost insignificant, or wild, passionate, almost beautiful,
yet in his eyes was always the same because of the extraordinary
freedom with which she looked at him, and spoke as she felt.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: into convulsions. "Oh, oui, che suis tres-choli garcon, bien peau,
cerdainement," continued Mr. Pinto; "but you were right. That--
that person was not very well pleased when he saw me. There was no
love lost between us, as you say: and the world never knew a more
worthless miscreant. I hate him, voyez-vous? I hated him alife; I
hate him dead. I hate him man; I hate him ghost: and he know it,
and tremble before me. If I see him twenty tausend years hence--
and why not?--I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was
dressed?"
"In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white pique
waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in
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